


Story of My Life

by Yunimori



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Hope, Innocence, M/M, Memory Loss, Reflection, Short & Sweet, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 04:41:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21173597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yunimori/pseuds/Yunimori
Summary: Still reeling from losing his memory, Shockwave is trying to cope and trying to remember that he is far more of an adult than he feels, and that far more terrible things have happened than he currently remembers. It's hard, however, when everything he sees is new and wonderful in comparison to the memories he has left.





	Story of My Life

**Author's Note:**

> I'm copying all of my Shockwave and Optimus/Shockwave ficlets and drabbles from my tumblr accounts over to my ao3 account. Most of these are going to be incredibly short (hence the drabble tag), and either in short-form format or 100 Themes Challenge format.
> 
> This is just for my own peace of mind, making sure they are safe from tumblr's random purges.
> 
> However, feel free to read them and let me know if you enjoyed them!

He’d come to the wall to simply look, wanting to take in the changes to his world, changes that still amazed him. The wasteland of his childhood was barely visible to his weakened eyes; a receding shadow slowly being overtaken by a carpet of colour: reds, yellows, blues, bright flowering patterns that waved lazily against a backdrop of green. There was water out there, flowing in a bright ribbon through the green of grass and flowering plants, hidden beneath copses of trees twice again Shockwave’s height dotting the landscape, only to emerge again to tumble over half-hidden crevasses left over from the scorched earth that had met his eyes daily so many years ago.

He had no memory of what the ravages of the War had done to Cybertron. He saw the leftovers now; even now faint hints of Iacon’s greenery-covered ruins glinted in the afternoon sunlight, the broken pieces of a world shattered flickering in the corners of his eyes as vines and flowers grew to cover them, a bedecked grave site for things no one would truly talk about with him. 

Instead, Shockwave had the memories of childhood. When Cybertron’s oceans were myths, reduced to mere puddles that took days to get to, and were so salty that to let it touch you was to invite rust before the day was out. When surface water was unheard of, and scarce, rapidly-falling aquifers were closely-guarded secrets to prevent the populace from stealing water that should have been free. When the only plants he ever saw were dead or dying trees in pots that lined too few walkways, scrubgrass that lived only in labs, and flowers were cryptids he’d only ever seen in picture books. When turbofoxes and glitch-mice were the only animals he’d ever seen in the wild, with what few cybersnakes and other creatures he knew existed being confined to his father’s lab. A planet that never had rain; Shockwave hadn’t even known what rain _was_ until it had poured the other night, frightening him until someone explained why water was suddenly just dropping from the sky. Where rations were simply a fact of life, and he remembered going hungry more than once simply because there wasn’t enough to feed _everyone_ all at the same time. That was when coffee had become his ‘best friend’. Easy to synthesize, lacking almost all nutritional value, still yet it filled your belly and gave you false energy for the days when Synthergon made you too sick and Energon was simply too expensive.

It seemed that was all in the past, and in more than one way. Fields of windrye waved cheerily on the other side of Metroplex, along with gardens full of silverroot and the newly-created, punnily-named ‘heartbeets’, surrounded by camfruit trees in full fruit. All of it fed by clear water and giant deposits of Energon that, for all intents and purposes, seemed to be growing at the same rate as the plant and animal life it fed. 

Shockwave could stand here on the wall and count more living species than he’d ever seen in his life, all without moving an inch. He could feel the sun on his face and still yet be able to smell the rain that was probably going to come again tonight; the faint breeze bringing the scent with it from the west. He could stare out at the receding wasteland and just barely make out the line of dry, cracked earth that was succumbing to the reaching green fingers of _life_ growing over everything. 

He’d only been ‘awake’ a month or so. His memory of six million years of war had not yet returned, though he still assumed it would. He had only the memories of being young, a newly-appointed Senator with a fledgling Academy as a safe haven for other Outliers like him, a newly-developed Endura that he loved more than life, a chip on his shoulder stemming from the blatant classism and functionalism that ran rampant in the Senate, and internal conflict between his natural shyness and the _need_ to speak up, to right the wrongs he saw every day; a conflict he had not yet mastered when his memory simply…ended…only to restart again a month ago, with a headache and stumbling out of a greenhouse with no idea how he’d gotten there.

All of this was too new. Too exciting. Too…_alive_. He wanted to go out there, to go beyond the wall surrounding Metroplex and walk through the grass. To see the animals that flitted in and out of his vision from up here, to watch them thrive. He wanted to get close to the faint frog-song he could just barely hear from up here on the parapets, to watch the electro-toads croak and try to drown out the tiny, glittery peepers Solus had shown him not too long ago, before she released another hatching of them into the wild. He wanted to go _out there_, to walk to the edge of the wasteland, to see with his own eyes that the Cybertron he once knew was truly being replaced by this wild, green planet overflowing with life. He wanted to see for himself that the cities he once knew, had read about, had traveled to in a few cases, were truly gone; that Metroplex was the only one ‘left’, minus what little communities the traveling Velocitronian colonists had set up. He wanted to satisfy his wonder beyond what he felt here on the wall, standing on his tiptoes just to see over the parapets. 

Most of all, though, Shockwave really wanted to just ask Optimus to go with him. He was still getting used to the idea that his beloved Pax was now the Prime, had changed his name with the taking of the Matrix, though he was still Pax. He understood all too well how much his Endura had to work, and he was reluctant to ask for something so…selfish; to take a day and just _go beyond the wall_ seemed almost impossible, though he knew Pax would not let him go by himself. He’d already been told to stay inside where it was safe, so he wouldn’t get lost, get hurt, without any memories to guide him.

But gods, how he wanted to ask. To take Pax and just…go. Explore. Spend the night outside the walls, under the stars that were no longer shrouded by a haze of pollution that couldn’t be filtered, since there was practically no plant life. To spend the day _looking_ and the night listening, letting the sights and sounds of growing overabundance become overwhelming until he had to shield himself against his Endura for fear of bursting. To get away from the city, from the reminders that his people were almost all gone, that something _still_ wasn’t right and no one would tell him what, and simply _be _for a day. Be the two of them, exploring and imagining as they should have been able to when they were as young as Shockwave remembered them being, instead of trapped in a teeming city that was equally as desolate as the landscape surrounding them, if for different reasons.

Shockwave’s hands, shaky as ever, tightened slightly on the rough stones of the parapets, teal blue eyes wandering over the ground below as he thought of this. He let traces of longing come to his face as he kept his back turned to the glistening, still too-empty living city behind him, his wings parting into six delicate, butterfly-patterned things that tinted the sunlight shining on him, lending more credit to his desire to be out there, just for a day. But he wasn’t selfish enough to ask. Perhaps the self he couldn’t remember, tempered by six million years of war and working alongside Op – because he simply couldn’t imagine being anywhere _else_ during the War – would have been brave and selfish enough to ask it, to _demand_ it, possibly, to get Pax out of the office and gone for an entire day, just with him, _outside_…but he didn’t remember that Shockwave. All he had was himself…and he couldn’t ask. 

But he could wish. And that is what he was doing when his comm rang with a familiar, soft love song that let him know immediately who was calling him.


End file.
